


The Wedding: A Sombre Affair

by morningsound15



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV), The Haunting of Hill House (TV 2018)
Genre: (hopefully?), Canon Compliant, Closure, F/F, Grief/Mourning, Post-Canon, just a haunting of hill house/bly manor crossover because i can't stop thinking about it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:48:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27095302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morningsound15/pseuds/morningsound15
Summary: Bly Manor feels a hundred lifetimes ago, and with every passing year it feels further and further still. Slipping out of her grasp like the sands of time through her fingertips. It’s a feature of the mysterious house that the memories caught within are destined to wither and fade — to wash away smooth, like rough stone at the bottom of a lake. That’s part of why she tells the story as often as she does. She needs to preserve the memory of Bly and the ghosts within.That’s all ghosts are, really. Just memories the living refuse to let go of.
Relationships: Dani Clayton/Jamie, Theodora "Theo" Crain & Jamie (The Haunting of Bly Manor)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 180





	The Wedding: A Sombre Affair

**Author's Note:**

> Okay… okay. This wouldn’t leave my head. Wrote this in like 2 hours.
> 
> A little _Haunting of Hill House/Bly Manor_ crossover for the soul.

____________________

Jamie takes a long sip of her whiskey. She hopes it will calm her shaking hands, but they shake all the time, now. Whether she’s sober or not. Age or arthritis or exhaustion catching up with her. It’s hard to say which. All she knows is her joints are stiff and her hands shake.

She rests her head on the cool wood of the mantle, taking a moment to breathe in the silence. The story always takes a lot out of her. She’s perfected its telling over the past few decades, carefully working the cadence of her voice, getting the pacing just-so, drawing out the people in her memories until they’re actual characters, realized and lovely and full of life. She tries to be kind to them, in her retelling. She tries to think of them sympathetically, as all people deserve to be thought of, but she knows that some of her embellishments are too liberal to be fully believable.

Even so, all good ghost stories need some embellishment.

She’s just not sure which parts are real and which are embellishment anymore.

It’s hard to even know how many of her memories are truly hers. Bly Manor feels a hundred lifetimes ago, and with every passing year it feels further and further still. Slipping out of her grasp like the sands of time through her fingertips. It’s a feature of the mysterious house that the memories caught within are destined to wither and fade — to wash away smooth, like rough stone at the bottom of a lake. That’s part of why she tells the story as often as she does. She needs to preserve the memory of Bly and the ghosts within.

That’s all ghosts are, really. Just memories the living refuse to let go of.

It’s a small comfort that Miles and Flora don’t remember much of their childhood at Bly Manor. Children aren’t meant to live through terrible things. The ghosts have long left them behind, and unburdened they have become lovely young people, vibrant and full of life. Flora is married now, and she made a truly beautiful bride. Jamie spins the ring on her finger, thinking of her own marriage-that-wasn’t. It’s not a melancholy memory, not anymore. She once was overcome with sadness and grief over her own loss, the future that was stolen from her, the forever happiness she could once taste on the tip of her tongue, but that feeling has long since faded. She is an old woman now, too old to be overcome with such sadness.

Still, weddings are something of a sombre affair.

“Your story was wonderful,” a voice says behind her, and Jamie straightens, subtly wiping at the moisture in the corner of her eyes.

She turns to see a young woman behind her. She looks strangely familiar, though Jamie is certain they’ve never met. Her hair hangs in loose waves, the dark blue of her dress contrasting with her pale skin. Her face is angular and her eyes are a cutting pale green, so light they’re almost blue.

It’s her eyes that are so shocking. They knock the breath out of her. Jamie stares at the woman for a long moment, unable to speak. Dani’s eyes had been almost exactly the same colour (when they had been her eyes alone, when they had been hers and not _Hers_ ).

The woman must see the hesitance on her face. She holds a hand out. She’s wearing a pair of long evening gloves, silk. They go all the way past her elbows. A curious look, for a wedding that isn’t black-tie.

Jamie’s always had a preternatural ability to tell when a woman is gay. She knew Dani was interested in her the moment their eyes met. It had been a dangerous feeling, electric and sharp up through her spine. She ignored it for as long as she could, but Dani was a magnetic presence; not easily ignored.

“Theodora,” the woman says when Jamie takes her hand. “My friends call me Theo.”

Jamie knows as soon as she shakes this woman’s hand that she’s a lesbian. Call it intuition, call it perception. Either way, it relaxes her. She’s long grown tired of explaining her bachelordom to well-meaning young straight women who see her refusal to re-marry as petrifying as a death-sentence. As if to be unloved for a moment is to be wholly miserable. As if there is nothing more terrifying than being an old woman with no partner to hold her at night.

(They misunderstand her. They think that being single means she is unloved. She isn’t. She’s been loved wholly and completely, all-consuming and never-ending, since she was a young woman. She’s never doubted it for a moment.)

(Sometimes she feels arms wrap around her in her sleep. In her dreams she is warm and loved. She feels the presence of another human being in her bed, feels warm breath on the back of her neck. It’s always gone by the time she wakes up, but she chases that feeling, longs for it every time she closes her eyes.)

(She looks for her in the mirror, in the bath, in the silver chrome of napkin dispensers, the dark emptiness of a dormant television, in her makeup compact. No one else ever looks back, no one but her own face.)

“Nice to meet you, Theo.”

She finds young queer women particularly interesting. Sometimes, though not often, she allows herself to think of what her life might have been like, had she and Dani been born a few decades later, had they come of age in a world more prone to acceptance and open-mindedness than the stifling environment they lived in. She doesn’t think about it often — it’s a sad thought, not worth dwelling upon. Besides, she wouldn’t trade their time together for anything. It was perfect, exactly as it was, exactly when it was. It’s not worth thinking of might-have-beens.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” Theo says, looking a little uncomfortable. She stares at Jamie intently, as if studying her. As if looking for something hidden in her face. She wonders if she looks as familiar to Theo as Theo does to her. She wonders if that means anything, or if it’s just another occurrence in a life of strange occurrences. A remarkable coincidence of mutual and impossible recognition.

“Are you with the bride’s family?” Jamie doesn’t recognize her, but then again she’s not particularly close to the Wingraves anymore. Not enough to keep track of their extended friends and family.

But Theo shakes her head. “The groom. Old family friends. My sister is getting married next year. Jack’s going to be in the wedding party.”

“Ah.” The silence between them is awkward. Jamie doesn’t know what to say, nor how to politely excuse herself. “Lovely service, wasn’t it?”

Theo nods. “Very sweet. Short.”

“Yes, short is usually better, as these things go.”

Jamie looks down at her empty whiskey glass and longs for a top off. The reception isn’t even halfway done, and she’s already fulfilled her role as ‘Elder Relative Storyteller’ for the evening. She has nothing left to do but linger until it’s appropriate for her to slip off on her own.

She much prefers being alone these days. Other people are challenging for her, difficult to trust. They find her difficult to understand. Best to be avoided altogether.

“Can I help you with something?” Jamie asks when Theo still doesn’t speak. “You look like you have something on your mind.”

“Can I ask…?” Theo clears her throat, clearly uncomfortable. “It’s about your story. The gardener.”

Jamie swallows the wavering smile and keeps her expression neutral. “Of course. What did you want to know?”

“Why did she stay with the au pair? She knew their love was doomed, but she stayed with her all those years. Why?”

Jamie’s smile is tiny, but she can’t help its presence. Thinking of Dani always makes her smile. Even when it’s tinged with sadness. “The gardener knew that she wouldn’t be able to have the au pair with her forever. But love and possession are opposites. Loving her was never about having her.”

“But the au pair’s spirit never returned. She left the gardener alone. She could have taken her in the lake; they could have been together forever. Isn’t that… isn’t that what they both would have wanted?”

“To truly love another person is to accept the work of loving them is worth the pain of losing them,” she says, repeating Owen’s words from a night ago. It is a lovely summation of her own life, though it’s painful to hear. “Dead is not gone.”

Theo takes a shaky breath. She closes her eyes.

Theo has a haunted look to her. Jamie wonders if she has ghosts of her own, hiding somewhere just out of sight. Occasionally she meets others like her; people with histories long-buried, with ghosts lingering in the closet. People who have lost too much too young, who have death sticking to their souls like an unescapable shadow.

She wonders if that’s why Theo sought her out. Those who have been touched by spirits have a certain sadness to them. Prolonged contact with the dead has that effect.

“It really was a lovely story,” Theo says again. Her eyes are wide, kinder now. They shine with something. Jamie wouldn’t call it tears. Maybe ‘melancholy’.

“Just an old wives’ tale,” Jamie dismisses. “Something to set the mood. Weddings have a way of making a person think of her own mortality. And it’s an old house. Old houses deserve ghost stories.”

“Is that all it is? A ghost story?”

Jamie’s lips twitch. “I always thought so. Flora disagrees.”

“Flora?”

She shakes herself. She keeps forgetting. “The bride,” she explains. “When she was a girl we called her Flora. The nickname lingers, though she doesn’t respond to it anymore.”

“She didn’t like your ghost story?”

“She didn’t think it was a ghost story at all. She said it was a love story.”

“Same thing, really,” Theo whispers, and Jamie sucks in a quiet breath.

“Yes. I suppose so.”

Theo continues to stare at her, and it’s getting a little unnerving. She regards Jamie with a gaze that is unblinking and fixed. She traces the lines in Jamie’s face, the grey of her hair, the veins on the backs of her hands. It would be uncomfortable, or maybe erotic, except there is nothing like desire in the woman’s gaze; nothing that says she’s interested in what she’s seeing. More like she’s troubled by it. Or disappointed.

“You still have something on your mind, Theo,” Jamie says kindly. People, like ghosts, have a tendency to linger as long as their business is unfinished. She doubts she’ll have a moment of peace tonight until Theo decides that her curiosity has been tempered. “And I’m beginning to doubt it has anything to do with my ghost story.”

“Sorry. I don’t mean to stare. You… look like someone I used to know. And I thought…” She looks down at her own hands, encased in black silk. She pulls at the fingers of her right hand glove, one by one freeing the digits from their confinement.

Jamie watches her carefully. Theo flexes her fingers and holds her hand out again.

Jamie doesn’t know what makes her want to take the woman’s hand. She knows with a settling finality that she’s going to; there are some things that are destined, even tiny moments such as this. And she’s long believed in destiny.

She still hesitates for a moment. She’s not sure what’s going to happen when their skin meets, but the way Theo looks at her makes her think it’s not something she wants to find out. That only makes her more curious.

It’s been a long time since she sought out physical contact. It had been too difficult after Dani. No one else ever touched her the way Dani had, and no one ever could. She used to wonder what she would have done if she’d been able to touch Dani one more time. She hadn’t been able to swim low enough. The Lake was too deep, or Dani hadn’t wanted her to. She’s not sure if those are different things. She’d reached out, longed for Dani to take her in her arms once more and hold tight and never let her go. She’d wondered if Dani’s skin would have been warm or cool to the touch, and which would have been worse — knowing she’d only just missed saving her, or knowing that she’d been taken long ago, and there was nothing in her power that could have saved her from the Lady of the Lake.

Theo doesn’t prod her. Jamie takes her hand of her own volition.

She’s not sure what she expected. Something electric. Some shifting of the world, a re-focusing of spiritual energy maybe. Maybe an apparition appearing behind her eyes, a chill down her spine. The presence of something or someone long-dormant, exploding into being.

The touch is unremarkable. Theo’s hands are soft and warm. Her gloves have kept her skin baby smooth. She holds Jamie’s hand more softly than when they shook earlier, and Jamie looks at where their hands touch, her older sun-damaged skin standing in stark contrast to the perfect youth in front of her.

Something settles in her stomach. It’s not a feeling she can describe, but it settles and when she looks at her hands again they’ve stopped trembling.

Curious.

“The gardener really loved her,” Theo says quietly, her hand still soft in Jamie’s. And Jamie nods, unable to speak.

“The au pair… she loved the gardener, too. That’s why she left her. By leaving she knew she was leaving her true love, too. But… she had to.” Jamie blinks. “If she stayed she was risking them both. And Dani would never risk that. She couldn’t risk you.”

Jamie’s knees buckle underneath her. She drops Theo’s hand as if burned and takes a few stumbling steps back. Her glass slips from her trembling fingertips and it shatters against the floor.

Theo recoils, quickly slipping her hand back into her glove. “I’m sorry,” she whispers, casting her eyes about wildly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean… I’m sorry.”

“Who are you?” Jamie whispers. She knows this woman’s face. She’s seen it before, somewhere long-ago… in her dream, or in the shivering surface of a warm bath, or in a painting on the wall, or at the bottom of a frigid, misty lake…

“Aunt Jamie!” Miles catches her elbow, steadying her. Jamie blinks, his face swimming in front of her eyes for a few moments before it sharpens. “Are you alright?” He looks towards a nearby waiter. “Come clean this glass up!” he snaps. “Someone could get hurt.”

He leads her gingerly to a nearby couch, despite her protestations. “I’m fine,” she promises. “Just a bit too much to drink. This old house is drafty. I’m fine, I promise.” Still, he doesn’t leave her side until she’s had some water and bread, until her heart rate has slowed and the band resumes playing.

The strange woman in the gloves has long-since vanished, and though Jamie looks for her for the rest of the night, she never sees her again.

She falls asleep in her room later, and it is a fitful sleep. She curls up on an armchair, uncomfortable and cold, but she prefers to sleep this way. The discomfort prevents her from sinking into a too-deep sleep. It means she is perpetually unrested, but she’s gotten used to the exhaustion. The alternative — that she will sleep through the night, sleep through a visitor, any attempted contact… it’s not something she is willing to risk.

It’s a fitful sleep, full of fitful dreams. Smoky haze and icy water. Dani is there, or maybe she isn’t, and a woman she knows but cannot see, a woman with wavy brown hair and long slender fingers who reaches for her, reaching out out out—

A warmth settles over her, so slowly she doesn’t even notice it. Her dream grows restful again, her breathing steadies. She sleeps as if on the softest bed, wrapped in the warmest blanket. Her mind is empty of all worries. She sees Dani closer now, sharper. Her smile and her smell, her eyes brilliantly blue and all hers, all her.

Jamie smiles in her sleep. The hand on her shoulder tightens. The calm settles over the hotel room, just a woman and her memories, a woman and her ghost.

________________

**Author's Note:**

> Come yell at me on [ tumblr ](https://morningsound15.tumblr.com/).


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